Hangzhou - Day 9, 10 and 11

The ride to the islands confused us a bit. There are many places to hire boats. We got off at the Longxiangqiao (龙翔桥站) subway station and walked over to the river (passing the Gucci store!). The best one to take is the really fancy air-conditioned one that will take you to the island. What we didn't realize is that this is the ONLY fancy boat and it just goes to the island and back to the shore. It doesn't do a round trip.



Each route is run by different boats and they basically go back and forth. They also leave the island in different places. So wherever you arrived (unless you want to go back where you came from) is not where you need to catch the next boat. In the middle of the island is a place to buy food and drinks.

Don’t forget to see the reflecting moon thingy’s. Not much to look at but just don’t miss them.

The island is actually really pretty and it's a very nice walk around with lots of opportunities for nice photographs. You can also see the whole perimeter of the lake so its good to get a good orientation. For example, one of the pagoda's we wanted to see turned out to be on the top of a hill and because of the hill and the fact that the pagoda looked like all other pagoda's we decided not to visit it!

Catch the boat to north-western corner of the lake and visit the Quyuan Gardens. They are bounded by the lake, Beishan Rd. and Yanggongdi Rd. We were going to go here but didn't have time. I'll definitely go next time because it looks like a really beautiful place to visit especially in the summer.

You can then head back to Beishan Rd. and go and visit the Yuewang Temple. We enjoyed roaming around in this place although it does look like many of the other temples in China!

And of course my favourite photograph that I now use as a background on my smart phone:

All of this should be enough to fill up your day! But if it's not there are always the shopping malls to take in :)

Day 10:

I would suggest biking around the lake on day 10. That is what I had planned to do :( Was really ticked that I didn't get to do that especially since the girls had practiced AND they had kids bikes for rent. 

There are oodles of things to see around the lake, like:
Orioles Singing in the Willows 杭州--柳浪闻莺
Hangzhou Underwater World 杭州海底世界
Chinese Silk Museum 中国丝绸博物馆 (I really wanted to go and see this one)
Leifeng Xizhao (a pagoda on top of a hill)
Jingci Temple
Taiziwan Park
Viewing Fish at Flower Pond 花港观鱼. 

And if you have any energy left take a trip to the China Tea Museum (88 Longjing Lu) and drink Hangzhou's most famous tea "dragon well".

Day 11:

Take time to chill before you catch the night train to Xi'an.

Catching the overnight train was relatively simple. We just had to get to the main train station and find the right waiting area. There was no good food or drink in the waiting area so make sure you get something before you go through security. We had decided to have instant noodles for dinner. These things are great, everyone eats them. You just buy a Styrofoam soup bowl, they are available absolutely everywhere, and then all you have to do is find hot water. This is not a problem in China. Every (train) car has a tap which serves you “scalding” water. So all you do is take your bowl to the tap, open the lid halfway (very important), remove the foldable fork, fill the bowl with adequate water and then close the lid using the fork to hold the lid down. If you've no idea how to do that just look at all the other peoples bowls and copy them. After 5 minutes or so you have yourself a hot meal albeit not so tasty.

You can see the noodle bowls in the bottom left hand corner!

Overall the train was great. The one problem we had was that people smoke in the train. It’s a non-smoking train but no one objects to people smoking between the carriages. The only problem with that is that the trains are sealed because they are fully air-conditioned. The smoke invariably seeped back down the corridor and into the compartment via the vent under the beds. Not nice but once you are asleep you might not even notice it! Once the staff had put the lights out, at around 9:30 pm, it was amazingly quiet. No more loud movies, chatting, or cell phones ringing. We were totally amazed and all slept relatively well.

And now on to Xi'an. Probably where we had the most fun of all :)